The invention relates to a nestable and stackable box comprising a rectangular bottom, two side walls and a back wall, which walls diverge, starting at the bottom, a lowered front wall and a foldaway stacking support.
Such a box is known from the French Patent Specification No. 1 387 232. Acces to these boxes is limited when they are in a stacked arrangement, on account of the relatively high front walls. This is disadvantageous when, for example, such boxes are used in shops were the customer is to take objects from the boxes himself. If in these boxes the front wall is lowered to, for example, below the internal stacking ridge, nested boxes are no longer secured in place and may shift relative to one another, which is very disadvantageous in transport.
The aim of the invention is to provide a box which does not have this disadvantage and which does not need a front wall for securing, without causing the loss of an important advantage of the known box, which is that stacked and especially nested boxes form perpendicular assemblies.
This has been achieved by the front of each side wall having been bevelled off to make an obtuse angle with the top of the side wall, by each side wall being provided with an opening near its front. The vertical plane bounding the opening at the front is located totally in advance of the perpendicular projecting from the vertex of the obtuse angle between the front and the top of the side wall upont the bottom, at least part of the wall section between the opening and the front of the side wall expanding outwardly and downwardly, to a distance of one to three times its horizontal wall thickness so as to form a ridge having a width of one to three times the horizontal wall thickness, an inside protrusion is provided on the ridge and against the outward-going wall section while an outside protrusion is provided on the outside of the side wall and below the opening. The underside of the outside protrusion is at a distance of at least one third of the side wall height beneath the ridge while the outside protrusion extends laterally not further than the side wall thickness plus the nesting clearance. The structure of the present invention therefore cooperates such that in a nesting arrangement, the outside protrusion falls behind the inside protrusion to lock the nested boxes.
The boxes according to the invention can be stacked and secured in place with the aid of stacking supports. In a nested arrangement, with the supports folded away, the boxes can be horizontally slid one within the other until the outside protrusion falls behind the inside protrusion. In a nested arrangement, each box is sunk into the next-lower box for about two thirds, while some nesting clearance is maintained to avoid the boxes being stuck one within the other.
Sliding the boxes one within the other can be facilitated by providing the box with outwardly directed rim sections at its top, the height of these rim sections being substantially one third of the side-wall height.
In order also to be able to lower the box more or less vertically into another box during nesting, the plane bounding the opening at the top can be located at substantially one third of the side-wall height from the top of the side wall. The outside protrusions then meet no obstructions on the way down to behind the inside protrusions.
It is advantageous to provide the inside protrusions with top planes going upwards in the direction of the back wall, so that the boxes can be slid one within the other more smoothly.
The box can be provided with means to prevent objects inside the box from sliding out of the box by advantageously providing the box with a lowered front wall designed as a threshold, the inside height of the front wall from the bottom not exceeding the inside distance between the bottom and the ridge.
In a particularly advantageous embodiment of the box, the back wall has been provided near the side walls and near the bottom with backward-projecting stacking protrusions and in that the back wall near the side walls two openings have been provided which extend above the stacking protrusions to near the top of the box, in such a way that in a nesting arrangement the stacking protrusions project through these openings. A box so designed can be stacked with its front resting on a stacking support of a next-lower box and the stacking protrusions being supported by the top of the back wall. Since during nesting first the stacking protrusions can be stuck through the holes in the back wall, the rest of the box can subsequently be lowered more or less vertically until the outside protrusions are in secured position.